Monday, August 16, 2010

Hello, Ladies! This is the final installment of the Daughter of the Kings Bible studies. I hope that you have enjoyed our time studying what it means being a daughter of the King. So let’s just jump right in!

Daughters of the King Pt. 4: Application

I believe that every good lesson should have application. I know that not all parts of this lesson have had application sections, and now you know the reason. Today I want to take a look at one final section of scripture and bring everything we have talked about thus far together in one conclusion.

Read Psalm 45

For space I won’t include all of Psalm 45, but I will include the verses we are going to highlight. However, I greatly encourage you to read the entire chapter. There are so many good and encouraging things in this chapter.

Focusing In:Psalm 45:9 “Daughters of kings are among your honored women; at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.”
Remember that according to 1 John 3:1 (How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.) we, as Christians, are all Daughters of the King! This simply goes to prove that these verses are talking about us. They are relevant to us. We should pay attention to what they are saying about us and to us.

Psalm 45:11 “The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor Him, for He is your lord.”
The King is enthralled by your beauty! Imagine it! God is enthralled by your beauty. Enthralled means captivated or charmed and is synonymous with Enchanted. God is captivated by your beauty. God is charmed by your beauty. God is enchanted by YOUR beauty! How amazing is that! God sees you as perfect and beautiful just the way you are. If God is enchanted and captivated by the women He has created us to be then why do we spend so much time focusing on the negative things we see in ourselves?Psalm 45:13 “All glorious is the princess within her chamber ; her gown is interwoven with gold.”
I want to take a moment to focus on one word—glorious. Glorious means delightful; wonderful; completely enjoyable. God completely enjoys us and the way He created us. He didn’t make a mistake. He made us delightful. He made us wonderful. He made us completely enjoyable!

Princess Lessons:

Take a moment to think about the movie Princess Diaries. If you haven’t seen it then I hope you take the time to watch it. Anyway, before Mia found out she was the Princess of Genovia, she was clumsy and didn’t see many good things in her life. Even after Mia started having princess lessons with her grandmother she still broke glasses, wreaked havoc on meals with dignitaries, and had many other embarrassing disasters. Her life didn’t really change overnight.

What really caused Mia’s transformation?
I believe her transformation started when she truly accepted that she was indeed the Princess of Genovia. This is when she started accepting her responsibilities and who she was born to be. She also began to have confidence in her heritage. She believed in the woman that her father saw in her as a young child.

Was Mia perfect from this point on?
No way! Mia still had incidents when she performed less than perfectly. If you don’t believe me all you have to do is watch the second movie. Mia also continued to have moments of self-doubt. None of us have perfect records when it comes to believing in ourselves. We all have days when our jeans don’t fit or our faces are broken out with tremendous amounts of acne and we wonder why anyone would ever believe in us. It’s what you do when you have the moments of doubt that truly counts. I love the quote from Mia’s letter from her father. In this letter he writes, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” If you can’t find the courage to rise above your fear that you aren’t good enough then you will never truly recognize your heritage as a Daughter of the King.

My Princess Lessons:

Lesson #1: Have the courage to believe God and accept that I am a true Daughter of the King.

Lesson #2: Start believing that God created me to be beautiful and that He sees me that way at this very moment.
God has never lied to you before. Why would He start lying to you now? Think about it. The Bible is 100% truth and it says you are beautiful. To say you are not beautiful is to call the Bible a lie!

Lesson #3: Train my mind, my heart, and my body to believe I am God’s Princess and to behave like I am God’s Princess.
Memorize scriptures that will remind you how God sees you. Do things, such as exercising and eating right that will help reinforce a positive self-image and help you to feel good about yourself. These things can’t be your self-worth but they are very helpful tools in enhancing a positive self-image. I know I feel better about myself when I have taken time to eat right and exercising. Maybe you will too!

Lesson #4: Make a conscious effort to STOP saying negative things about myself.
This is possibly the hardest of all the application lessons. Your negative thoughts about who you are are the biggest obstacles standing between how you see yourself and how God sees you. If you consciously make an effort to stop being negative about yourself you make room for you to see the positive things in yourself that God sees in you all the time. If you are constantly telling yourself you are fat, ugly, or stupid then it’s no wonder you think you are fat, ugly, and stupid!

Lesson #5: START recognizing the positive areas in my life!
Are you a talented artist or musician, tell yourself about it. Share your talents with others. Are you an avid reader, keep track of all the books you have read and tell yourself you have done a great job in pushing your mind to read all of them.

Lesson #6: Work on the things that need improvement instead of using them to beat myself down all the time.
I hate it when people sit around and complain about their problems but never do anything to fix them. Yet, when it comes to my problems of self-image I often do the exact same thing. Instead of whining and complaining about being overweight and then telling myself how stupid I am for being overweight, I should use half that energy to go for a walk! I would have walked a lot by now in my life!

3 comments:

This is really good! You should start a girl's bible study and I wish I was a part of it! I know I'm a princess, and thanks for the reminder as I'm working on actng like one, etc. Also, did you know that we're the same age? Yayy!! It's always hard to find someone that shares your age. I'm just not married...yet. Also, I saw your other blogs. Really cool! Your husbands blog is good too and he's so funny! well, have a great week!

I have thought about writing a girl's Bible study book but I have never done it because I wasn't sure that it would ever get published and I am really, really busy. Thanks for visiting all our blogs by the way. We try to have fun while we write, and my husband is a really funny man. I think it's cool that you and I are the same age. It's nice to have someone else to talk to that's your own age.

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